Some for, others against Gray Thursday

By Ian Benjamin

Saturday, November 24, 2012

TROY -- The Wal-Mart on Hoosick Street was just one of many stores which kicked off its bustling Black Friday holiday shopping event early, with sales that began late Thursday--much to the dismay of some, and to the pleasure of others.

In the Wal-Mart parking lot Friday afternoon, Anita DeChiaro of Cohoes was having a ping-pong table placed in the back of her car. More than annoyed about Wal-Mart's corporate decision to begin Black Friday sales at 8 p.m. on Thursday, she would rather have been purchasing the table somewhere else, if not for her grandchildren's wishes.

"I don't even know why I'm here, I'm so mad about it; but the kids wanted the ping-pong table, so I came out today," said DeChiaro. While she was willing to come out at noon to pick up the table, it wasn't something she would have come out for on Thanksgiving, even if she knew it was the last one.

"We should all be able to be around the table for Thanksgiving," explained DeChiaro. "I don't think it's worth doing this (shopping) on Thanksgiving, Good Thursday. I just don't think it's a good thing to do. I think Friday is just enough."

And that belief was one she feels should be held by her family: "Whoever sat around my table wasn't going to try to go out; or they'd be glued to that table," she said with a smile.

This year, Wal-Mart stores across the nation started with the Thursday evening sale, followed by another at 10 p.m., in line with openings or sales at competitors including K-Mart, Target and Toys R Us, among dozens of others.

When asked why the sales began earlier this year, DeChiaro echoed a sentiment held by many: "It's got to be about the money, what else could it be?"

According to Ted Potrikus of the Retail Council of New York, the answer is three-fold.

First, customers are willing to line up for sales, said Potrikus, so retailers are looking to reduce those lines by spreading out the sales, and have people in the store for longer. The second reason has to do with the growing pressure from online retailers who, unlike brick-and-mortar stores, are available to customers 24 hours a day. The last reason, however, is one that surprising to many.

"It has a lot to do with customer safety," explained Potrikus. "A few years ago (...) some of these doorbuster sales were getting to be more like wrestling than shopping." At one Black Friday opening in 2008, Potrikus noted, a security guard was trampled to death when a crowd pushed the doors of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y. After this incident, the retail industry in New York came under pressure from law enforcement, local and state legislators, and the public in general to do something about the annual mayhem.

"If you think about a tire that has too much pressure in it," said Potrikus, compare that to "those doors opening on Thursday and into the earlier morning hours on Friday and letting out some of that pressure from the tire and really smoothing out the pressure, removing the 'buster' part of the word 'doorbuster.'"

"I don't buy it," said DeChairo, when the reason was posed to her. Although she was not going to be partaking in any early morning lines for such doorbuster sales, Jeanette Doyle, of Berlin, who parked a few cars away, was returning to Wal-Mart, having been in line at 5 p.m. for the 8 p.m. sale at the chain's location in Bennington, Vt., the day before, where she crossed some important items off her Christmas gift list.

"Everything I really wanted I was able to get," Doyle said, including an X-Box and a laptop; electronics were some of the major markdown items at Wal-Mart locations across the country.

Doyle, who held her Thanksgiving early, appreciated the early store openings because they allowed her more time to get her Christmas shopping done on Black Friday. "It was easier to go at 8 o'clock at night, instead of going at midnight and having to wait in lines forever."

With the Friday outing, Doyle was finishing up her Christmas shopping for the year, and checking to see if the Hoosick Street location had any sales she had missed in Bennington. She was one of many hitting the store in the afternoon.

Tabitha Scanlon, of Lansingburgh, was one of the employees working the register. She said it was not much more crowded than a usual Friday, although "the aisles were a little congested, a little crazy, but it's Black Friday, it's going to be a little crazy."

And that little bit of craziness--like the earlier openings of doors and sales--is likely to continue when Black Friday, and Gray Thursday, roll around again next year.